Using film, radio, posters, the press, and carefully staged rallies and marches by party members, Goebbels nurtured the myth of Hitler’s infallibility. He promoted as well the illusion that Hitler knew the hopes and struggles of every German, cared deeply for each of his people, and might intercede for them personally, much in the manner of the loving Christian God … Thanks to his [Hitler’s] undeniable [early] successes, popular adulation of Hitler soon took on the quality of a religious faith. Hitler’s position as a kind of secular god would later convince many members of the SS, and others as well, to carry out the extermination of the Jews without feeling that they had to consider ordinary laws and morals.
How Could This Happen (8), pp. 122, 130